Changes
by Roofie
Summary: Sometimes, the only way to pull through is to know someone's there. Daniel gets turned into a woman. 63!Dan/Ror. I can't seem to make a good summary for this angst fest
1. Dan, Change

Authors Note: Kinkmeme prompt...Daniel gets turned into a woman, thing is he's already 'with' Rorschach. Freak outs ensue.

Or in my case, horror and angst galore.

Enjoy.

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It is not their usual kind of job. There are no thugs, no gang members trailing with pipes, knives or guns. There is no alleyway or warehouse filled to the rafters with despicable things. There are no drug dealers or pimps. Just silence and bleach-clean floors. This is not their kind of job at all.

And that's all Daniel Dreiberg can focus on as his body snaps and breaks around him. As his bones compress under the skin and his face feels like it's being burnt off with acid. Slipping through the cracks in his skull to pool in what's left of his writhing stomach. As a mechanical whine screeches through his ears and into his very soul. No, this was not their usual kind of job. So, perhaps they should have stayed away.

xxx

It had taken them far longer than usual to find a trail. No one was reported missing. There was no surplus in gang-activity, at least none that they could see. There were no mentions in the papers of medical experiments claiming lives either. Of course, they had not expected the latter. No medical facility dumped their lab-rats down back alleys or in the docks.

[_"No medical experiments this side of the millennium would leave anyone looking like that."_]

They had found themselves here entirely by dumb-luck (if you could call trudging by leaky pipes lucky). Daniel had accidentally overheard a conversation on the local street corner. A prostitute and a callboy hissing into the shadows. The source was questionable at best, but it was better than the nothing they had been working with.

[_"... are you crazy, B.J?"_

_"Yeah, yeah Mon', but it's the only shot we got--."_

_"You could just stick to being a fag and not get yourself killed!"_

_"What's the worst that could happen? He's a doctor, Mon', if he can help—."_]

xxx

And God, this hurts.

xxx

"Do you think _God_ gives a damn about the people here?"

The laugh peels through the room like an out of tune violin. Scratches at Nite Owl's ears like knives. Makes him recoil in horror at the sudden animation of a man he had thought was a corpse.

"_God_ hates people like us. People like you, people like me, like your partner who—who I know is crawling around somewhere near here right?"

Eyebrows raised in mockery, in an understanding only another man of questionable ethics can have.

"Watching your back, keeping you safe, like a good boyfriend. What you think we can't spot our own?"

Nite Owl forces himself to focus on the face, to see the eyes and not the body. The body covered in burns and blisters, in slashes and growths. A body that should have been dead, not talking to him like it knew his inner-most secrets.

"But _God_ tells us we're wrong for that, you know. Tells us we're wrong, when He—_He_ made us this way. We're given the wrong bodies and the wrong minds, then left to deal with it. Abandoned because _God_ can't love people like us."

"What-?"

"The Doctor wants to fix us. He understands. He knows we're just in—in the wrong bodies. So... so he's trying to give us different ones. The right ones."

"You don't--."

"We're God's unwanted children, Owl-boy. We'll do anything..."

xxx

Nite Owl thought he'd felt his share of pain. Knife wounds, bullet holes, broken bones, even chemical burns. But none of them ever felt like this. Like blisters on his blood cells burning him from the inside out. Like his eyes were popping inside the orbital bone. Like his spine was being torn from its socket.

Screaming did nothing. Gave no momentary relief. No satisfying ache to the lungs that distracted. Just the entirely unpleasant sensation of swallowing your own blood and vomit back down the wrong way. Made his throat tear into shreds and fall into his gut.

He thought he knew what it felt like to be torn apart. He was wrong.

xxx

"Come to watch the show, baby?"

This voice Nite Owl knew. He'd heard it, for what seemed, a thousand times. On street corners and down seedy back alleys. Always the same obnoxious pride, the same naive blatancy. Only this time the visual did not match.

There was no exaggerated feminine hair here. No makeup. No skirts. No knee-high red boots. Just a lost little boy, swaying in a cell, drunk with something like desperate hope. Lopsided watery grin as eyes stare helplessly at a solitary vent in the ceiling. Hands held wide, welcoming some metaphorical messiah.

"We'll all be better soon."

xxx

The air drummed in a way he had never felt. Pulsed with the anticipation of something that was meant to be wonderful but, only Nite Owl could see, was actually murder. Staining the walls. How was this making them _better_?

The body beneath his fingers barely weighed a thing. But the fight in it rivalled the ferocity of a caged animal. It screamed and it roared and it begged to be left alone. To be given this chance at freedom. But death was not freedom. It was just another cage.

This was what Nite Owl told himself as he threw the bundle of bones out into the dark. Away from the roaring vents as they snapped open and churned like a dying machine. Cried with the rising bile of whatever had been used to destroy these men. And Nite Owl was now right in the firing line. Too slow to escape the blast. He was engulfed by smoke and acid. Consumed by his own screams.

xxx

They should never have taken this job. They were in over their heads. Should have known from the moment they were led underneath a damn hospital. Should have known from the state of the bodies that this was not something they could handle alone.

They should have gone with Rorschach's plan. To find the source and cut it off. Not try to find the victims. Not try to be the all-encompassing heroes Nite Owl wanted them to be.

Now Nite Owl was going to die. Torn apart and crushed. Mutated and burned. Would there even be anything left? It didn't feel like it as his chest exploded and his fingers snapped where they drove into his palms.

Rorschach would come to find the only thing he had in a pool of fat and sinew on the floor. He was going to be alone and broken. All because Daniel wanted to be the goddamn hero.

God, if he survived this, Rorschach was going to kill him.

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There. Done. Yay.

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	2. Ror, Change

Ror' POV

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Something was wrong. Something was very wrong. Daniel was in trouble. No, worse than trouble, pain and he needed to get to him. He needed to save him. To hold him. To protect him. He needed to get to Daniel.

Stupid. Shouldn't have split up. Should not have gone separate ways. Now Rorschach was facing an empty hall surrounded by wet screams. Barely recognisable. Pounding through the halls like a thousand fleeing feet, ringing in his ears like an air raid siren, telling them to get out. Get out now!

The pipes rattled like zoo-monkeys beating against the bars, and he's running. Tripping. Scrabbling over obnoxiously waxed floors, and the seconds were ticking by like they do not care. The screams wavering and gargling in the dark. Dragging on and on as though they had replaced the need to breathe. Broken and rattling, changing pitch, then whining out into silence.

"No." And it's barely there as feet skid over tiles, rumbles into nothing.

Hissing into the dark and everything stops. Everything's stopped. And nothing feels better. It's worse. Silence means it's ended. Silence means it's over. Silence means-.

"Help..."

It's disgusting. It's terrible. It's terrifying. But it's not Daniel. So why can't he look away? Why can't he drop his eyes and leave him to die in peace. Why was he watching, rooted to the spot by his own mounting horror, as what is left of a man scrapes through a door towards him?

Blood pours out of his mouth and trails on the floor. Tears stream down his face and yet he is blind, holes where his retinas should be. And this time there are no screams as skin ruptures and bursts, leaking over the floor in a bloody mess. A vile parody of melting wax, or pouring custard through a layer of film.

Rorschach has to look away. Has to pull himself back across the floor where he has fallen, because that face is no longer unfamiliar and un-connected. That face is turning into Daniel's with each passing moment. Showing him how his partner had burned in his bones and spread into shapeless patterns on the tiles. Had died without him, had died alone. Just the way they had always feared they would. Just the way they had always promised never to-

"No." And this time its anger, denying the grief, grasping at seeping flesh, "Where is he?"

No answer comes. He doesn't need one as he throws the pulp aside. Tearing into the sepulchre. Vowing a Nite Owl would not be buried here. Among death and decay, among murder and lies. Buried beneath Rorschach's inadequacies and poor planning. A Nite Owl would not be buried here.

But Rorschach is not prepared. He is not prepared for the sight that confronts him. Of Nite Owl spread across a vomit soaked floor. Silent and still. Small and alone. Broken and hidden under shadows.

There is no blood, no burns or boils to see on the exposed flesh glowing under Kevlar, and somehow that makes it worse. For that means they still need to be discovered. Revealed as zips pull back and organs pour out. Slip through the gaps onto the floor. Because right now those zips and clips are all that is holding this corpse together.

And as he stares, ink blots swirl lazily ignorant of the pain behind the face, Rorschach is lost. All the threads holding him together, all the ropes tying him to the ground snap and fray. Leave him in freefall, leave him frozen from the tips of his fingers to the edges of his soul. Nothing makes sense. Nothing is fair. He knew this. Had always known this. But this time knowing it hurt. Hurt like scissors to the eyes. Like bleach in the throat. Like a knife to the gut. And this time warm arms, brown eyes and wings weren't going to make it go away.

And if Rorschach could have breathed, could have moved, could have even made a sound, he would have screamed. Roared. Torn himself apart and used the pieces to put Daniel together. Make a whole person out of the two broken bodies pouring over the linoleum. Shoved them back together, like making love.

So perhaps it is insanity that drives a man onto his feet when there is no life left. Nothing left. Perhaps it is madness that scoops the last of himself up onto his shoulders and stumbles out into the night. Maybe it's a complete absence of awareness that makes a man carry a body 20 blocks. Arms, chest and face beating his back in steady rhythm with the steps. Or perhaps it's basic instinct to take your friend, your lover, your family... your life, home.

Rorschach takes Nite Owl home. Through tunnels and trap doors, into the hole where monsters reside, where a metal moon judges him wanting and he lays a hero on the dust thickened floor.

Now Walter sits beside him, no tears, no words, nothing. Just sits. Consumed by the absence of anything. Barely aware of Rorschach's screams for revenge, for retribution, for justice. They just ring in his ears, like the silence, reminding him that he is completely alone. Now until the end, which he hoped was not long.

But then he hears it, scraping through the silence that had been blotting out everything. Making the world fall back into focus, sharp and painful, no longer the blur of nothing but his own fingers and failures. But he hears it, rasping in the dark. Breathing. Breathing... Breathing!

He'd been breathing the whole time. He'd been breathing. He hadn't died. He'd been breathing, and the suit is torn open so fast that blood flies into his face. Splatters his coat and oozes onto the floor but he doesn't care, because Daniel's breathing under the blood. Breathing.

It's wrong though, it's wrong. He finds the beating chest too deep in the armour, too shallow and the wrong shape. Softer. Feels like-

"No." Panicked fingers rip back the cowl, "No, no, no, no, no!"

Too high cheek bones sweeping softly. Sharp jaw rubbed into a delicate curve. Lips fuller, brows rounder, and eyes... eyes...

Eyes open.

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	3. Dan, Purge

Dan's POV

* * *

Eyes stare at him through the mist. The condensation distorting the view of paling tan and diluted blood, making everything seem like a mutation. The wrong shapes the wrong lines, the wrong face. All hidden by the steam on the mirror.

And Daniel's stomach feels like it's an alien life form. Squirming and rolling in a thousand knots that can never be untied, tripping over itself in a rush of horror. His mind is filled with a million voices, screaming and whining and scratching at his temples. Tearing through his veins and pulling through his eyes. Choking him on thin-air. Driving him to the very brink of complete collapse.

xxx

It is like being sat in a pitch black room, for hours, days, maybe years. A room so dark he can't tell if his eyes are open or closed, so silent it doesn't seem real. Like floating on nothing. Like breathing black. Then a switch is flicked and everything comes crashing back like an atom bomb, bright and burning. Sounds leaking through of broken sobs. Shapes in the light gaining mass and definition.

Daniel blinks out the blood that he can't remember getting in his eyes, and wonders why he can blink at all when mumbling rings in his ears. It's distorted and he has no idea what it is, but it screeches like a fog horn.

Walter's hands pull at his mask, and blue eyes burn into him, but seem almost blind. Blind with panic, and infectious fear. With disbelief and... and repulsion?

xxx

Fingers squeak against the glass, clumsy and unsure, falling short a few times as he stumbles against the sink. Everything's too short or too long, too big or too small and it makes him want to vomit.

Wiping away the mist with alien fingers still veined and muscled by years of fighting. The glass creaks and he chokes on thin air.

He cannot believe what he's seeing. He cannot be seeing what he's seeing. He just can't. It's impossible. It's wrong. It's staring back at him covered in half washed blood. It can't—it just can't.

xxx

Daniel rights himself in a blink, all the blood that had pooled over his chest pouring out onto the floor in a series of guttural slops. He barely notices. He barely notices anything. Not the way his chest is too heavy. Not the way Walter scrambles back into a corner. Not the way he is too small in his suit.

What he does notice is the way his throat ripples like he's swallowed worms, and his skin crawls under the armour like there are a thousand bugs. Scabies. And the thought has him retching. Tearing at Kevlar, frantically pulling it open to spill on the floor. Stained red flesh is raw in the cold air as he runs. Scrambles up the stairs in a mad rush, and his voice is alien and high in his ears as he squeals.

"Get it off!"

xxx

She's out of place covered in blood, staring through bloodshot eyes, fingers shaking against the glass as Daniel fails to cling to reason. He doesn't know who she is but she's sliding against the sink as his knees buckle. Her eyes roll and he thinks he might pass out again. But he grips harder, so does she, and it makes his stomach tighten.

She's a disconnected image, a hallucination that has to go away if he concentrates long enough. It has to fade back to strong jaws and defined pectorals, not high cheekbones and soft bare breasts. It has to be a dream because nothing this unfair, this horrifying, this violating can happen. Not to him. Not to Daniel.

But there she is, retching as he retches, blinking as he blinks, and all he can do is watch it happen, because his mind isn't present anymore. It's gone on a long roaming journey to places unknown while his body stands mutated in a bathroom.

xxx

He vomits and shrieks at what he sees. Crawling little black dots scratching at the bowl, eating away the blood until its yellow and white, plasma and water. And as he grips the edges his nails begin to bleed, more black dots crawling through the mess.

[_"It's called a purge."_]

He climbs into the shower before the waters even warm and scrapes at the stains on his skin as it crawls under his fingers. Black dots spiralling down the drain, like fleas with no fur to grip.

[_"Everything unwanted or unneeded gets forced out of the system. Only the essentials remain."_]

They're pouring out of his ears and scratching out of his eyes whining through his senses like an overbearing sickness. Blinding him to everything. Making nothing real. And as his fingers scrape at breasts and thighs the world goes dark. Face against enamelled steel.

xxx

Daniel had awoken from a bad dream, and stepped into a nightmare. Pulling himself out of uselessly running, scalding water, and stumbling to the mirror. Staring at himself, staring at _her_ and it can't be real. It can't.

It's all wrong. He didn't want this. He never wanted this. All he wanted was to stand by his partner and save the world one measly ungrateful victim at a time. And this is how fate repays him? No hero's death, no going down fighting... No, it just _can't_ be real.

But it is. It's all so terribly real as his fingers find pieces that shouldn't be there, find a place where pieces are very missing, and in the mirror she finds the same answers. The same truths that were supposed to be lies, and he can't take it, she can't take it. The scream rips through his lungs, her lungs, like shattered glass. She falls as he falls and the screams don't stop as he watches his life crash to an end.

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	4. Ror, Scream

Ror's POV

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He has been curled up here for hours. Since that woman ran screaming out of the room, since Daniel ran screaming from _him_. He should have followed, he knows he should have, but Walter can barely move. Every attempt turns into a series of almost seizure like twitches. His body reacting to the shock his mind cannot process.

Walter doesn't know how he's supposed to cope with this. How he's supposed to behave. All he knows is he's scared. More scared than he's ever been in his life. Scared that everything good he's ever had is about to implode. Leave him quivering in the crater, because he _can't_ cope with this.

Words fail him when he tries to call for help, though he isn't sure whether it's because he can't ask, or is afraid to. Afraid to call down the nightmare he was refusing to believe.

How can he believe it? His partner, his best friend, his touch stone, his anchor was mutated and twisted into something wrong. Something not Daniel. Eating away at everything he'd ever let himself feel. Tearing away his sanity. His hope.

Hours pass, but none of it fits together. Like time skips back and forth. He doesn't even know if he sleeps, he barely knows if he is awake. It all seems like a bad dream.

All his thoughts are disjointed and broken and it hadn't been Daniel's face under the mask. Not his face. The wrong shape the wrong size, the wrong everything. Nothing familiar everything alien. Wrong. And it doesn't seem real. He questions whether it is. He questions his sanity as the screams ring above him like a siren.

Rorschach had heard Daniel scream countless times before. Cries of pain, fear, anger and triumph. He'd heard them all, and been drawn to them. But like this, high and feral, they seem to grip inside his very skull, nails digging into his scalp, removing all reason, all instruction. The only thing left is blind instinct. To move. Move now.

After hours of barely being able to twist a finger, Walter disappears behind latex, and a monster sprints up into the Brownstone. Scrambles onto the second floor, and then skids to a halt. He should have stayed in the basement.

A woman stands naked and bloody in the hall, gripping the doorframe like it's her lifeline. Tears streaming down her face. The gulp he emits is almost audible as she catches him in her sights.

"Rorschach." It gasps at him, and the voice is wrong.

It holds all the same ups and downs, the same pieces of relief he's heard before, but it's not _his_ voice. She advances, _everything_ moving with her. Rocking back and forth, catching the light and showing everything he didn't want to see. Then she stops, shocked, her eyes turn inward, to herself, and fingers scratch at the skin, at her legs and stomach and arms and chest, like she's trying to tear it off.

"Look at me!" She cries, and Rorschach almost vomits.

He feels like he's eight years old. Watching things he shouldn't. Feeling like his nightmares are tangible and not just illusions that fade with the darkness. That at any moment a hand is going to collide with his face and he's going to be told he's not wanted. Never was. Never will be.

"Look at me Rorschach! Look at me!" Tears roll anew as she stumbles towards him crying out for help he can't even begin to comprehend giving.

He looks for an escape, because he can't look at her. He can't see that advancing body that almost wants to attack his very soul. But her fingers grab at his collar and pull him in. Her face so close and he sees the fear in her eyes.

"Look at me." She hisses desperately, but he turns his head and pulls away.

Staggering back like he's been punched in the stomach, she scrabbles after at him wild as an animal. Words bustling together in a mad rush or yells and sobs, and Rorschach can't cope. He can't take the noise and the sight of it. He can't take it as he falls into a heap on the floor. Pushing back into a corner, slapping away hands like a petrified child. But she isn't stopping; she's screaming and grabbing at his face. Grabbing at what's left of his control.

"Look at me Walter!"

But he can't! He just can't! It's wrong, it's disgusting, it's right in his face and he can't look at it. He can't accept it. He can't- he just can't. And as the latex is torn away he scrunches his eyes and wrenches his head to the side. Half crying, half screaming.

Silence. It rings in his ears, and spreads through the Brownstone like smog as his screams are met with silence, but he daren't open his eyes. His heart pounds in his ears and he can't open his eyes because he knows it's going to be there, poisoning him when he does...

"Get out."

Walter's gut feels like it's fallen out onto the floor as his head swirls, and now he looks, at those bloodshot and tearing eyes, filled with disappointment, disgust and horror. So much like what he remembers of-

"GET OUT!"

Leaving her behind, leaving Daniel behind, leaving his face behind, Walter is through the window before her screams can start again. Only hearing the thud of what might have been knees against the carpet as his feet carry him as far away as they can, never looking back.

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	5. Dan, Weeks

Dan's POV

* * *

The black satin slides over his skin, makes it crawl. Reminds him of that first day, when-

He doesn't know where it came from. A left over from one of many fights between Laurie and Jon. He doesn't honestly care as he stands before the mirror.

It's too small. His chest makes it impossible to fasten, and the seams stretch around his hips. But there she is. All over again. Staring back at him.

[_"Do you know what it's like to look in a mirror and not recognise who you see? To see a body, a face, a person looking back out at you and not know who it is or how they ended up this way? Just, some alien, that happens to move at exactly the same time as you?"_]

Her hair's short and messy, unkempt; he hasn't bothered to wash in days. Her eyes are dark, swollen; he hasn't slept in over a week, barely stops crying for hours. Her skins covered in scratches, bruises; he keeps falling over, bumping into things, trying to get it off. She looks shell-shocked and un-fed. She looks like a victim of war. Daniel finds it ironic, because he feels like one.

xxx

The first week passes in a haze of screams and bruises. Half conscious, or mostly asleep. Covered in oversized shirts and surrounded by silence. Blood seeping through gaps, like it had been searching for the seams. Every waking moment is spent in disbelief

And he's too angry to care where his partner is. He's too angry to give a damn about upsetting him. This is not about _him_. And he is so incensed that he has been left behind to deal with this, to stand this foul horror taking place in his body, that he barely cares about that look of absolute terror in Walter's eyes. Of complete grief and childlike pain.

For the first week all he wants is to tear himself apart, peel back the skin and find himself inside this mess. For the first week all he wants is an explanation.

xxx

For four weeks Daniel holds onto the hope that this is just a dream. That at any moment he will wake up and this body that isn't his, that never was and never will be, is gone. But now he stares at her, in a black dress and a mirror, and he feels it tear away from him, burning emptiness in his chest.

[_"Do you know what it's like to look everywhere but at your own face, just to avoid the truth riding in your eyes?"_]

Because for weeks he had seen nothing. Nothing of himself. Not in this. Not in this body with all the wrong sizes and all the wrong shapes. But as he stares at her face, as broken as he feels, he sees in her eyes that piece of himself he'd not noticed. That piece of himself he had ignored, had _not_ identified with, because it meant that this was true. That this had happened. Had happened to him.

He sees it now though, tearing through his last bit of hope, his last sense of belief that something this unfair could not happen to him. And as he sees himself in her eyes, he starts to see everything else. The scars from fights long past, the calluses and hardened skin over his fingers, toes, knees and knuckles. From years of walking, from years of working. He sees it all now.

He sees everything that's there, that makes this body his. He sees everything that is, and now he sees everything that's missing as his fingers drift down to where that piece that made him – made him who he was, made him a man - was absent.

[_"I never realised how much of myself was tied up in what hung between my legs."_]

xxx

The second week passes with mounting tension, the days muddling together in a mess of worry, inward repulsion and rising irritation, of staring out of a window, ignoring his own reflection, and waiting for Walter to come home.

He doesn't.

By the end of the third week, Daniel's trust that his partner would never forsake him begins to waver. And for once he wished that Rorschach was normal. That Walter could piece together 'leave me alone' in fact meant 'don't you dare'.

But it's only fleeting, as his eyes find himself on the glass and he retreats from the light of the world.

xxx

Finally he sees. He sees it all. Sees what he is, what she is. He is her. She is him. He is a woman. And as the pieces slide into place, forced in and smashed down and made to fit against their will, she makes sense in the mirror. She's no longer a disjointed image he can't comprehend. She is what is left of him.

What is left of a hero? What is left of a man? What is left of Daniel? She doesn't know.

[_"Imagine what it's like, to be a man one day and a woman the next. I mean, really imagine it. Imagine if you're a woman, waking up with a penis between your legs, and if you're a man, imagine how it would feel to wake up with it gone._

_Don't just think about how fun it would be to have this or that. Think about how everything you ever thought you knew of yourself, all those bits and pieces that make up who you are, then imagine them gone. Stolen from you without your permission or warning, and you can't get them back."_]

What _is_ left finds its fist mingling with glass and stumbling through the shards, falling to the floor. Begrudged acceptance leaks through her veins and she wishes, still, that this weren't true. She knows it is, though. She knows it is. There is nothing left but a woman lying on the tiles, wishing gloved fingers would pull her up onto her feet and save her from it all.

[_"Now imagine facing this alone."_]

xxx

The fourth week brings complete insanity. Skin red raw under a wire scouring brush and scalding heat. Trying to wash it off, tear it off, scrape it off. Make it go away. Make it all go away. So Walter will come home.

He knows these breasts, and these thighs and these cheeks are keeping the one thing he needed in the dark out of reach. And all he wants is to see those blue eyes, even if they are filled with hate and disgust. Even if they are frightened and weak. All he wants is to see those eyes, and know they're with him.

But they don't come home. They'll never come home, and he screams into his bloody knees. He's never coming home.

xxx

Bits. Littering a blood speckled floor. Bits. Parts of a mirror, pieces of a person pressed against the tile. Glass healing into the soles of feet, she hasn't moved in days. There are no tears left; they ran out a week ago. She won't sleep. She can't. Eyes are black, showing the truth of the thing. She can't close her eyes without seeing his face, seeing him run.

[_"Like a goddamn spooked deer."_]

She can't close her eyes without seeing the woman in the mirror. Because that's what she is now, a woman. Lying here barely conscious, never asleep, that's what she is now. And if she had anything left, any capacity for emotion beyond numb acceptance, she'd be angry. Furious. Seething. Because she had done all of this alone.

[_"Don't know what I expected. 'It's okay'? 'Fine like this'? Stupid."_]

A month of being completely alone. Abandoned.

[_"I needed you there. I needed to know we could deal with this."_]

She missed him.


	6. Ror, Dr Idiotic

Two weeks, four days, three hours and 27 minutes. Rorschach would never admit to knowing that. Knowing how many seconds had passed since he fled. He remembered reading once 'conscience is cowardice'; it made him wonder what just plain cowardice was. Whatever it was, he had been the perfect example for two weeks, four days, three hours and 32 minutes.

Two weeks, four days, three hours and 43 minutes of sleeping in half full skips and eating rotten food. Avoiding what was left of home. Was it even home now? With Daniel—With him—With a woman. Wearing Daniel's clothes. Saying Daniel's words. Feeling Daniel's hurt. Sleeping in Daniel's—in _their_ bed.

Two weeks, four days, three hours, 45 minutes, and the door at Rorschach's fingers finally pops open. The office before him stretches out like a morgue, morbid and dark, with a thousand ended lives staining its pristine vision. And now the horror is forgotten, the sight of bare breasts, of absent pieces, of softened lines and too high voices. Now is not the time.

The cupboards and filing cabinets flounder under his scrutiny. Every item tossed aside, rendered useless on the fake-wood floor. Folders discarded faster and faster as it becomes abundantly clear that nothing here is of use. Nothing here relates to the monstrosity claiming innocent lives, his life, Daniel's.

Two weeks, four days, four hours, 26 minutes and the desk is bare but for one drawer. Locked. The only one that is. That has been. And it takes ten minutes to pry the thing open with a name tag that reads 'Dr. Balcombe' in the poor light from the street below.

Held within are all the words to answer the screams that had not left his ears for two weeks, four days, four hours and 39 minutes. All the words to answer, and all the words to damn as the mess of science-fiction jumbles together, to create one horrifying truth, someone had made the fantasy a reality.

Picking out important things like 'Nanotechnology' and 'gender reassignment programming', even 'aggressive territorial reaction', Rorschach could barely comprehend the disastrous meaning in the endless charts and scribbled notes. Of corrected formulas and omissions of failure, of subject descriptions, of symptom developments (only one he recognised), the gradually rising frustration in the aggravatingly obscure annotations. Deaths numbered but no one named.

Everything damning for the man who would return to his ransacked office and meet unforgiving fists as a letter falls to the ground. Unobtrusive and silent, but not unnoticed. It slides between his fingers and reads like a judges sentence; statement of purpose, of crime committed. Funding retracted. Permission receded. Further experiments forbidden. License threatened. Hypothesis ridiculed, 'Gender Dysphoria' discredited as unfounded conjecture upon un-agreeable subjects.

Reads like radio instructions. Barely makes sense, but two weeks, four days, five hours, and 17 minutes has brought him to a Doctor denied his dreams and mocked for his brilliant insight, who has turned to prey on desires of others. No matter how noble the first intentions, things were different now. Very different now.

Once there might have been empathy for such a plight. With Nite Owl lingering over his shoulder, playing the conscience in the whole person they almost seemed to make. Pointing out the desperate plight of the people listed in the extensive psychiatric notes. Seeing the ignorance of claiming one thing is the same as another, just a symptom of a greater 'disease'. He would have told Rorschach that they were not diseased, and that people just did not understand or accept the difference. He would not have judged with hypocritical indignant anger.

Now, however, it is just Rorschach, and he does not want to understand or empathise, he feels no sympathy for a fool. A fool with permission to use scalpels and pills is no better than a fool on the street with a loaded gun. This fool chose to use his tricks on Daniel; he would see not see mercy tonight.

So two weeks, four days, five hours, and 41 minutes have brought Rorschach here, waiting. Waiting for a Doctor to come and answer for his crimes. For what he has done to Daniel. Rorschach waits for the time when he can face his partner with an answer, a cure, because that is their only hope now. Isn't it?

They couldn't be the same ever again. Not like this. They made sense _because_ they were men. Only another man could understand this. What it is to be what they are. Monsters in the night screaming for vengeance in the black. A woman could not understand that. They were only thieves and harlots. Tempting the monsters in to make them weak. Rorschach could not go on without Daniel. Fighting alone. Not now. Yes, this was the only hope for the both of them.

Two Weeks, four days, seven hours, 32 minutes, and the early morning sun peaks through. A key edges into the door, turning to find it was not needed. In shuffles a Doctor, doughy-eyed from such an early rise or, perhaps, a late turn in. It doesn't really matter as his eyes find the form pulsating at his desk.

Rorschach expects warbled apologies and fearful buckling, a scrabbled escape attempt. He gets an awestruck stare, and dumb silence. It drags, and Rorschach's own surprise keeps him from moving. Keeps him from attacking. It keeps him rooted in his seat until the last word's he'd ever expect to hear tumble forth into the air.

"Is it true? Is she alive?" The Doctor's voice reeks with excitement and when he gets no reply but biting silence he can't seem to hold in his words, "One of the patients said it worked! That your partner's conversion had worked! I never... the first-"

"Very proud moment for you." Rorschach barely manages to hiss, and from any other man it would have been dripping with sarcasm. He had no room for sarcasm two weeks, four days, seven hours and 38 minutes after his partner has been torn apart.

"Well... yes!" The Doctor laughs smugly, but comes to an abrupt stop when Rorschach surges forward over the desk.

"Change him back." He growls, advancing without even the courtesy of pretending to stalk his prey.

The Doctor's face is more than he can stand as it falls into a state of, wisely fearful, incredulity. Mocking the agony he had wrought upon their lives.

"Back? But... why? She's better now."

"Was nothing wrong with him before. Change him back."

"Wh... no. It's impossible." The Doctor tries to rouse some firmness in his voice, it's pathetic, every bit of him is shaking in horror as fingers grind into his shoulder and make him cringe, "She's better now, can't you see?"

"Better?" Rorschach feels like he could scream, for the first time in two weeks, four days, seven hours and forty minutes, he wants to scream for Daniel and he's twitching so badly he can barely force out the words, "Was good. Fine. Decent... Perfect. Didn't need this. Change him back."

The look on the Doctor's face is infuriating as it sneers towards him, challenging his words, daring his fingers to break those bones.

"I made her right. _Now_ she is perfect, now she is good, now she is decent." He pauses to hear the hitching growl, "She's better, the nanites will keep her that way. It's what they were made for. There's no going back."

Rorschach's silence hangs in the air like a cloud, as the truth sifts through. Pieces of paper sliding into place, forming an order of proof to the words spat at his mask. The Doctor babbles about the future of people like him, like others, like Daniel. Of breakthroughs for science, of changing social barriers, of saving lives. But all Rorschach hears is the misplaced comment about his partner, the one person who mattered in this insane and selfish mess. Of how he'd been used and abused, then discarded, in more ways than one.

And the last bit of hope Rorschach had, that he could fix this his way, that he could prove his worth and make it all better fades away with that one passing comment. He can't find a cure. He can't change him back. He's never going to see _his_ Daniel again.

Now Rorschach's fingers tighten and the Doctor goes silent.

"Can't change him back?" He hisses, pulling the man close, "Then what good are you?"

The window shatters under the weight of a half conscious body, sending glass out into the light of dawn in a rainbow of crystallised lies. No one waits to see him die, but a man vomits in an alleyway for two weeks, four days, eight hours and 17 minutes worth of wasted time. And for the first life that laid truly across his hands. There may be no blood, but he smells it under his pores like sulphur in the dirt. Now there really was no hope.

* * *

Will link info for Gender Dysphoria at the bottom of my profile page


	7. Dan, Menstral Cycle

AN: I don't like this chapter! /shakes fist... can't seem to get it right /sadface.

* * *

The latex swirls between her hands, like satin and cotton rubbed together. Her fingers are stiff but she still manages to pad out the stretches where his nose usually sat, where his brow stood. He hadn't come back for it. He probably has the spare. Kept hidden in a box at the other side of the city, just in case. Just in case of what? Had he ever planned for something like _this_?

She laughs at herself, but it sounds more like a nasal whine. They could never have planned for something like this. With all its impossibilities and catastrophic implications.

[_"It could never happen to me."_]

xxx

It starts as a dull ache, low in her stomach. She manages to ignore it for hours. Curling her legs up in a futile bid to relieve the tension, Daniel lets out a moan. Half her bones crick, and every joint complains. The movement breaking the 3 day seal of inactivity.

It only gets worse, though. Tightening her muscles and ripping through her stomach. It feels like she's about to explode, and with everything that's happened, she is very aware that it might. That her gut could splatter out over the walls, acid and blood. Spread it everywhere else. Clutching her knees to her chest, whining pathetically, she can't help but think she has suffered enough.

xxx

She tries to think of what Rorschach is as his face lies in her hands. He was never about justice, or self-satisfaction. He wasn't about money or praise. He wasn't about being a hero. He was not about bringing people to the law.

He was about pay back for those hurt, and an end to those who had wasted their choices. He was vengeance. Volatile and righteous. Bitter in his indignation; that there was right and wrong with no in-between.

Nite Owl was so different, she thinks, as she stares at the window, black with the night, reflecting back a disgusting unwanted face. He believed in fair chances. He believed in the integrity of the law when it was a viable option. He believed that there was hope for this dying city. He believed in justice and exceptional circumstances.

Daniel didn't anymore.

xxx

The time passes in a haze of hissed moans, and half-hearted jerks. A few failed attempts at getting her face off of the floor long enough to work on the rest, but she does finally manage to roll herself over. The acute sensation of water trickling over her legs brings her up onto her elbows. Then an exasperated moan mixed with a loud broken yell rips through her as she sees blood leak over the floor.

It seeps from between her legs, over the inside of her thighs. Leaving fresh spots on the tiles, mixing with the blood from her feet and fists, from her eyes and knees. She stares at it until it begins to dry, leaving trails over her flesh like the veins in her eyes. It's not like before, crawling with dots, or escaping from a wound, and until her stomach gives another gut-wrenching twinge she can't quite figure out what's going on.

xxx

Rorschach knows that nothing is fair. Knows that this city is a lost cause, and that nothing can save people who do not wish to be saved. That everything they do is futile. Had known it always, but never gave up trying. He would not just sit back and watch as the world crumbled, he couldn't. It was an impossibility. Rorschach _had_ to fight. He could not compromise who he was and just sit back and watch it happen. No matter how many times he told himself, he would always fight the future.

Nite Owl was relentlessly optimistic. Was convinced that in the end everything would be okay. It was his mantra, he couldn't say it if he didn't believe it. He believed, or perhaps fooled himself into believing that what they did made a difference. That they were saving this place, slowly but surely, dragging it into the light kicking and screaming, but saving it nonetheless.

Daniel didn't know what she believed. She didn't even know if she cared.

xxx

She laughs. Hysterically. Gripping the edge of the bathtub with shaking fingers. Laughs until she almost vomits. Because this is ridiculous. Unthinkable. Downright unbelievable. Staring at the congealing blood disgusted, but inexplicably amused, Daniel knows what this is, and she feels disgusting as she stuffs a wad of toilet paper between her legs.

It's beyond a joke. Four weeks of agony, and now she gets her goddamn period.

xxx

Rorschach is the anger that is left of a broken man. He is not a hero. He does what he does because no one else will.

He is faceless because pain needs no face. He is featureless because fear needs no shape. He is a monster because what they fight are no longer men.

Nite Owl is a man, strong and proud. A hero. Does what he does because he wants to help. Tries to do good, and tries to help Rorschach stay human.

Daniel is not a man. She doesn't _want_ to help. She doesn't want Rorschach to listen to her lies. She doesn't want to save the city the way Nite Owl does. She doesn't want to cry into the night for justice the way he does. She does not want to bring them to the law.

She wants to run into the black kicking and screaming, scratching and burning. She wants to cry for revenge and violence. She wants to tear people apart. Because she sees now that it's all she can ever do. Like this she can't save the world. Doesn't want to, it doesn't deserve it.

[_"But I won't give up. I won't sit back and watch it drown. We're all that's left to fight for this world."_]

So she can't be Nite Owl, doesn't want to be. Not like this. She believes in nothing he does anymore.

The latex sifts through her fingers, and she doesn't stop to think, doesn't stop to consider the insanity. Or the way he'd react if he saw this.

Because she can't look at her, now that she knows who she is, what's left, she can't look.

The world vanishes behind a veil of black and white. Becomes the monochrome truth of what Rorschach says he sees. The muddling grey of her own doubts and fears fall away. She becomes the monster she feels she is. Looking in the glass, she can finally see the power she couldn't pervert in Nite Owl. Sees something worth living as.

There may not be a Walter behind the mask, but she finally has Rorschach with her. It's not him. But it's good enough for tonight as she crawls out of the finger muddied window.


	8. Ror, My Face

AN: **VERY** proud of this chapter though xD

* * *

There's someone. Someone in his face. In Rorschach's face. Tearing at skin. Pulling apart flesh. Breaking bones. Screaming into the night like a rabid animal. In. His. Face. Forcing broken bottles into spines and crushing faces against concrete.

Three people dead. Lumped on the floor like morbid sculptures before he manages to force it off of the street, into a squat, and onto the floor. Kicking and screaming like a creature that knows it's about to die. Knows it's about to have its head torn off.

But as he yanks his face back, reclaims his property, Rorschach finds himself unable to breathe. Falling away he stares in absolute horror.

"Daniel?"

That face. That face! It's barely recognisable. Lolling under greasy sodden hair. How had a month brought her to this? Skin pulled tight against blackened eyes. Like she has not slept in weeks. Lids red and heavy. Like she has lost more blood than her body could even hold. Cheeks gaunt. Had she even been eating?

This. _This_ was Daniel? This mess of a thief was Daniel?

Her eyes bore into him. They had been awed for only a moment. Now they were disgusted. Furious. Indignant and challenging. Tearing through his heart, holding the last month up in front of him like a judges sentence. A month alone had led her to this.

No! No this was not his fault! He didn't force her to do this. And the growl rips through him before he can even process his anger. Gripping her by the scruff of her pathetic, oversized coat.

Took it. Without permission. Stole it. Stole his face. Used it. Used it! Used it to be brutal and vicious and merciless. Used it to lie. To trick. To be a monster. Pervert its purpose. Pervert Rorschach's purpose!

His fists thrust her against a wall and leave her there to cower as latex is studied. Scrutinised. Checked for contaminants that are visible, not just psychological. Words aren't enough to express this... this violation. This betrayal. This breach upon his soul.

Had Daniel not taken enough of him already? Twisted his morals and views out of place just so they could be together in ignorant hypocrisy?

"Stole my face."

And it's barely a whisper, but a mouse sounds like an elephant in the empty space between. Pulsing and throbbing with strained loyalty, heartache and denial. With a million put off arguments and blatant abandonment. Tears and screams hung in the air like fog, suffocating them with expectance and adrenalin. With barely contained violence that was bleeding over the seams, ever since this nightmare began.

"Yeah, well" There is a hysterical giggle laced with anxiety, "I couldn't use mine."

The voice is too familiar. Even after a month of absence. Even with its purposefully burnt edges and feminine pitch. Broken and double edged with words that need to be said, but won't be, because they know they'll be shrugged off. It's too much like _his _voice. It's too much like before. It's wrong, completely wrong. Agonisingly wrong. Infuriatingly wrong. He's not ready for this.

And there is no warning roar. Nor steady escalation. The empty space between them closes in an instant. With a force fit for explosions. The wall groaning by her ears as she stares wide eyed and horrified at swirling ink.

[_Closer than it had been in a month. Close enough to kiss._]

Clenched fists barely an inch from either side of her, the leather brushing her ears. And she tries to melt into the mortar. Tries not to flinch as the words are spat through the mask into her eyes.

"MY FACE!"

There are no excuses. This cannot be forgotten and brushed under the rug like everything else they have tried to ignore. There are no explanations good enough for this. To answer that wounded sound. Like a dog being whacked with a stick as fists tear into plaster. No bastion of innocence strong enough to endure this abuse, this defiance. Because nothing is the same!

"Whoa! Hey—fuck—Rorschach! Stop, man stop!"

Each slam rode through his body, and rang in her ears. Burnt at more muscles than it was worth. Brought tears to her eyes as the swing forced her heart to juddering halts then agonising jumps. She was frightened. No. She was terrified. Brought to screams under the unrelenting violence raining down about her. And soon she was cowering behind her own hands as plaster scratched at her flesh. And he _hates_ that he cares.

His knuckles cracked and complained, bled. His fists just clenched tighter as he grazed her cheek. Forcing her to follow the flow into the wall. To see it crumble. Pass right through into the neighbouring room. Leaving blood and leather over the ragged edges. And the yell escaping her lips is so raw and aggrieved, so mortified and worried. The pitch is like a babies cry in his ears. Makes his mind stop and start, panic in a way it used to when Daniel cried out in pain. Only this time, it was worse. This time it made him want to vomit. He falls away.

Clutching his fingers they twitched and pulsed agonisingly and it doesn't matter. It never did. It was just a distraction from the pain he was feeling everywhere else. Skating through his veins like knives. A grief that seemed out of place, surrounded by such anger.

Everything was gone. Everything they had. Everything they had worked for. Thrown away for... for what? He could not forgive this. Could not bear to see it. To see Dan become a treacherous whore who whimpered and moaned and stole from him.

This was not Daniel.

And the broken sound that forced its way from his throat was almost like death. Perhaps it was. Because life without Daniel barely seemed worth the breath spent living it.

How could she do this to them? How could she break such bonds? How could she violate something so—not sacred— important, essential to his sanity? How?

"Why?"

The growl is laced with malice and distrust. With disgust and hatred. It's all he has left after all these years. And it hurts. Like nothing he's ever felt. And the eyes that wind their way up to his mirror the pain he is hiding behind the mask. It's wrong on _that_ face.

It seems to run deeper, to pull at his chords. The softer plains and wider eyes pull him into the emotion without even realising. Had he ever been this weak to a woman's wiles before? To Daniel's intense and overbearing sentiment? His instincts felt wrong here. He did not want to protect her from this. From the pain she was feeling. That she had caused! Did he?

"I needed you." The words should seem hollow from her mouth, but Daniel's tones force their way through the grit and tears, and Rorschach listens, "Your way of... I needed to know I could do—."

"Nite Owl not good enough?"

"No!" And the shake of her head is so vigorous and desperate that he doesn't interrupt again, "I'm... I'm not good enough for Nite Owl."

The tears are wrong. Flow too freely. Even for this strange version of what was once his partner. There are dozens of feelings playing across that ever-readable face, and Rorschach wishes for the cowl and goggles that used to hide this. Used to give him an excuse for ignorance. So he could walk away and not have to deal with them swelling through himself.

Her bloodshot eyes were like fingers dipping into a calm pool. The ripples spreading as they lingered upon the surface. She's a weeping mess on the floor, curling into herself, overshadowed and judged. And if he had been there, over the last month, he would have known she had spent it curled up like this. Trying to disappear. Foetal and shivering.

"N... not like this. I'm... I'm not Nite Owl like this. I'm disgusting. I'm hideous. There's... fluids." And the word gets stuck in her throat like coughing up bile, "I'm wrong. Wrong shape, wrong size, wrong reasons. Just wrong."

"_My _face—"

"Was the only one I could use, okay?"

And the anger makes him flinch. Again it's too familiar. Too much like Daniel to deny, and yet he still tries as the words are spat at him in that clipped tone. A tone that is always followed by heavy sighs and forced calm.

"I can't be Nite Owl; I can't even look at him! So your goddamn _face_ was the only thing I could stand to see in the mirror, alright?"

With that Rorschach fell to his knees, all the other words trembling from her mouth in the darkness, trailed by tears and rising bruises, faded into nothing. Just a warble in the subconscious as his heart pound in his ears.

He stared. Stared at the way she picked at her arms, as though trying to scratch away the skin. At the way she avoided looking at anything of her own body. Of her own existence. Tried to make herself seem small and unnoticeable. She even forced her voice to stay burnt and in mimicry of his, as though the natural register caused her pain.

It was like looking at himself. It was like looking at Walter. And with that Rorschach finally understood, that _Daniel _finally understood. She finally knew what it felt like. She knew what it was like to hate everything she sees behind the mask. She finally understood.

"Say it again..." The tone suggests a command, but it sounds like a request, gentler, because he knows now he should never have stayed away.

"What?" Confusion plays across her eyes as her train of thought is interrupted, and to anyone else it might have been cute...

"My face was the only one you could lo-"

"Look at in the mirror?"

Then as brown eyes widen to what they had just acknowledged, recognising the significance, a mask is pulled over brunette hair and tear cracked cheeks.

Before anything else could be uttered. Before anything else could happen. Could change. Could falter. He pulled what was left of Daniel up to her feet and straightened her collar. It was so domestic. It seemed very out of place in the circumstances. Two near-identical monsters watching each other in the dark, but that's why it mattered. This moment needed to last. It had to survive.

This was the first time they were ever going to be truly equal, now that he could see it. The ink swirled to fit to the curves on her face. It looked right. It was beautiful. It was frightening.

"Go home." This is an order, not to be argued with as he turns to leave through the window and not the door.

Fingers, however, curled into his collar bone and gripped with more power than he expected. But he had to remind himself this body was still Daniel, no matter how wrong, and Daniel was strong.

"Are you coming too?" The way it cracks, like a thousand bits of glass—

"Yes."


	9. Dan, Touch Me

Dan's POV

* * *

Streetlights rocking by, illuminating the smooth edges of Rorschach's face under his hat. Daniel watches the form fade in and out; it's like a dream, as she is carried in a bruised parody of a month ago.

Only now her feet drip through the half-hashed bandages that shoes have abandoned. Now she is conscious and clutching his shoulders. Now she is alive.

Neither says a word. There really is nothing to say. No, there's everything to say, but nowhere to start. The silence seems to thread its way through the streets, keeping them safe, in a bubble of rarely seen peace. Daniel doesn't want to say anything anyway. None of it seems enough. Wasted words on things that don't matter, that are just trivial.

xxx

Rorschach thumbs her shredded lip and tells her it's going to scar. She can't seem to make herself care about that. After all, what's one more mark on this mutated body? She tells him that all these bruises, aching bones and bleeding feet are perfect as they are.

He touches her torn soles with something like reverence in reply. A light broken noise slipping from his nose as he pulls off he bandages to assess the full extent of the damage. He sees the glass, and even she wouldn't miss the way his fingers shake as he pulls the pieces out.

But still he says nothing. Lost in the map of agony this madness has left on her skin. He can't question the motive. He knows stubbornness as unruly as this. Lives by it. Gets up to run with knife wounds and bullet holes. So Daniel just watches, barely flinching at the pain.

xxx

The Owl's Nest welcomes them with more of this silence. Archie's eyes following them in the dark, as Daniel tries to imagine those big glass domes filled with relief. Welling up and tearing over with happiness for having them back. It's a sad, but funny image, and her watery smile presses into Rorschach's shoulder as he hitches her up on his hips to turn on the lights.

He lowers her onto a workbench and pulls off the mask. He does look at her, she can tell, but it's only for a moment before he leaves her in the dark. Muttering something about clean clothes. Ramming his fists in his pockets. It makes Daniel cringe because his gloves are still torn over bloodied knuckles, and God knows how filthy that coat is.

xxx

"I missed you."

It's all she can think to say that isn't too inane or insignificant. She thinks it's important. Important that he knows that, because she hopes like hell he missed her too.

The way he shivers at the sound of her voice, however, makes her heart fall, makes her want to swallow her words. Until his fingers tighten around her ankles and she knows he didn't mean to do it. That it was just strange to hear Daniel in a woman's voice. She understood; the sound of it made her own skin crawl.

She doesn't speak again for some time, just continues to watch as he binds her feet and absently strokes her toes, like he's making sure she's there. Like he's making sure she's real. And she doesn't want to force this, she doesn't want to scare him away, she needs him here, but all she _does_ want is to press into hunched shoulders and pretend that everything is okay.

"Missed you too." He breathes over her skin, and if it weren't so silent, she would have missed it.

xxx

Daniel's eyes take in the dull metal and dust. Disturbed only by Rorschach's feet. She hadn't been down here once; she couldn't face it knowing Nite Owl was mounded on the floor somewhere, covered in blood, dying slowly. Even now her eyes kept her from finding it, finding his suit, but she could smell it. Over the engine oil and sweaty must, she could smell the rotting carcass of her old self. She wonders if the rest of the house smells this bad.

Her stomach turns upon realising Rorschach will see blood slopped floors, where her feet left prints, where her body left its mark. The house looked like the place of a brutal massacre.

She hobbles to her feet, wincing, but hands take her and sit her back down without a word. She wonders when he got back; she had been staring at the door, but couldn't remember seeing him.

He's arched like a man carrying the world on his shoulders when he hands her a button-up shirt and boxers.

"I'm sorry Daniel." He mutters, trying to make it seem like he is apologising for having no idea what she could wear.

She doesn't complain, neither does she. He pulls off her coat then stands in a corner facing the wall. It is an uncomfortable gesture of gentility or politeness, or maybe an attempt to hide disgust.

She changes clumsily. Feeling as small as a mouse when the shirt almost brushes her knees. She remembered when this shirt fit.

"So very sorry." And she knows that it's not about the clothes, but she tries not to think about that as Rorschach turns back around.

xxx

She asks to see his hands, fully expecting a dismissive grunt. But he seems too feeble and guilty, so small and tired. So she's not at all surprised when he offers his bloody knuckles up to her, hissing at the contact of her fingers.

She almost tells him that it's okay, but they both know nothing is anymore. Probably won't be for a long time. Instead she pulls him by that raw and mangled hand. Pulls him close, feeling the fluid motion of his fingers tracing her ankle to her knees, and up to her thigh.

Shivering like she used to when he did that to her. It makes him choke, and she's pretty sure he's crying behind the mask as she rubs his cheeks through the latex with her thumb. It's the only touching she's going to risk. The only closeness she will push on him as he quakes inside her personal space.

Holding him breath-close and steady she just looks at him. She wishes she could see his eyes, but knows better than to ask for Walter now. Walter was who had to run away. Rorschach was the one to stay. Walter was writhing inside the face and she didn't need to see it.

"You're not betraying me, you know?" She whispers, her voice closer to what it used to be in this low, intimately private form, "It's still me. I didn't go anywhere."

And Rorschach nods, pulling away.

xxx

"Did you find the doctor?" She asks, knowing the answer, he wouldn't have spent 4 weeks doing nothing like she did.

"Yes." He replies simply, full of anger and sadness.

"Can he hel-"

"No." This is almost spat as he tosses his fedora down on the bench next to her and crouches to look in her eyes.

"What did you do?" She breathes as he bites off his gloves and checks her hands; they're falling back into that safe place, where wounds are checked and the cost is totalled.

They're a train wreck of a pair and she can't quite seem to be bothered by that. The mess that they are curled over in a basement. Tending to each other's wounds like a million times before. Something natural sweeping over them as the adrenalin bleeds away.

"Threw him out of a window." He pulls her shirt over the shoulder and squeezes the bruises blossoming on her collar bone.

She hisses, and at first she is horrified, but she sees the way his shoulders roll as he crouches to take her feet. All the words in the world couldn't hide the way he was overflowing with guilt. She could tell just by the way he breathed he blamed himself for not being able to save her. Words were so trivial. But he needed to know.

Reaching out to touch his mask, he needed to know;

"Good." She whispers, in the end.


	10. Ror, Just Checking

A/N: THANKYOU SILVERFOX! The second you pointed that out my brain clicked. This thing had been bugging me so much, you have no idea! You're a life saver. I couldn't put my finger on it until you came along! /gives you a million cookies

**EDITTED AND IMPROVED**

* * *

For the first day, Daniel sits at the top of the stairs. She won't come any further. Says she can't. Just hovers in the basement doorway. Sometimes she leaves. Comes back with coffee. Places it at the foot of the steps. Rorschach replaces the cup when it is empty.

The blood that had smeared the walls and stained the floors above, keeps him locked here. Lost in the recesses of his guilty conscience and festering sense of horror. The darkness, the shadows of Archimedes and Nite Owl are safe. Are detached from the world upstairs. A world stealing his mind away. Unable to comprehend, still, that Daniel survived this.

They do this for days. In their separate, but equally frightening worlds. His filled with the scent of fear and rot, Kevlar and oil. Hers, by the second day, drips with bleach and brushes. She scrubs so frantically. Sometimes it's louder than the machines he's torturing back into life.

He learns to keep making noise. Extended bouts of silence have her calling into the dark with an edge of panic in her voice. It makes his whole body quake with misery and guilt. No words will convince her he won't leave again, so these bangs and clangs are all he has to offer.

She never says a word otherwise. When standing in the doorway. It seems impossible for her to articulate a thought. It is for both of them. It makes him wonder if Daniel really pulled through at all. Whether the thing scraping about atop his head is anything like the man he knew. He recognises nothing, but then recognises everything. But perhaps it is his self he sees now, what made her Daniel lost with all the red tarnishing the walls.

"Rorschach?" She calls, sometime during the third day, and he shivers at the sound as he scrapes against the workbench, emerging at the base of the stairs.

Hands stained, pliers twisting metal pieces. The role reversal feels strange when he stares up at her from under his mask; the black and white filter could never hide her purple, bruised eyes. Her raw fingers. Her scabbing knees. Her sunken cheeks and sallow skin.

He can barely looks at her. Seeing her bones and sinew wasted on heartbreak. He can't look at her. It's too much. Too much for his conscience to bear as Daniel looks to him for comfort that never comes. Just like they always did.

She carries every one of the fears. Walter ever had for Daniel right there on her skin. Of dying. Of pain. Of broken spirit. But in his worst dreams he never imagined this. Starved and stinking. Not even in a nightmare.

"Can- I mean- I nee-want..." She falls silent again, and Rorschach waits, hating how she doesn't know what to say, "Will you let me see Walter, just for a second?"

She is so broken, so different, so silent. Waiting for him. Waiting for him to strop reeling with excuses. He was not ready. He was still hiding behind the mask because he was not ready. He was not ready to confront his failures. He was not ready to be weak and fearful. Not in front of Daniel. Not when she needed him.

Being behind the mask was the only way he knew how to be strong for her. Even though, he was cowering in a basement.

But as Daniel's eyes shimmer with something like fear. Fear of the rejection riding on his tongue, he finds himself pushing up one side of the mask. Stretching the latex. An eye blinking into the overbearingly colourful light.

Gazing up at her half himself and half not. He does not know what she sees. He never dares to ask as she looks back. Trapped in more silence. Studying each other's reactions. Until she walks away. Leaving him staring at an empty doorway.

This simple exchanging of glances breaks three days of calm. Her silence breathes reality into this terrible dream. He is hiding in plain sight. Hiding from Daniel. When she has spent weeks alone and broken.

"Coward." He hisses, everything in his hands finding the floor in a series of clangs.

He is not ready to face this. To truly face the truth of what his partner is. What she is going to have to be. He is not ready to accept that part of his life is over. Nor is he ready to give Daniel what he knows she needs. He is not ready to be her lover, he is not ready to be her partner. But he knows he never will be. So he goes anyway.

Not because he needs to, even though he does, he needs to go up. He needs to face her or he will lose what is left of the person still waiting. He needs to face the blood and tears. Washed away but still there. He needs to make this real. No, he goes because he _wants_ to. Because he wants to stop being frightened. He wants to be as strong as he wishes he was. He wants to finally repay all the times Daniel has saved his life. He wants to stop burying his head in the sand.

He has had enough of hiding. They've spent too much time alone. Here, avoidance is disastrous.

He finds her in the kitchen. The scent of chemicals and rotting food turning his stomach. It takes her so long to register his presence, as though she's locked in another place. Seeing things he can't. Like she's going mad, after three more days of chasing a shadow that doesn't want to be found. He swallows down the bile when she smiles at him; it's disconcerting and half-there.

Rorschach knew there were things worse than death. Had lived through many of them. But seeing Daniel now, half-starved, half-conscious and half- alive, he considers he's never really suffered at all.

She stumbles to her feet has him rushing forward to take her hands. Touching her makes his skin crawl. Makes him want to run as far from this solid, overwhelming reality. But the thought of her falling, of collapsing with no one here, has him gripping her wrists until she can stand on her own.

"You hungry buddy?" She asks, slurring her words on the fatigue and pain running deeper than he can see.

His self loathing knows no bounds as he just watches her slide around the room. Dropping everything she picks up. Babbling about nothing and everything all at once. Trying to behave normally. Trying to make _him_ at ease. He hates it.

Hates how Daniel is always trying to take care of him. Even now. Even after- Always trying to take care of him. It was stupid and it was foolish and it was so very... Daniel. She makes it harder and harder for him to keep believing she isn't real. That she is his or what is left of something that _was _his.

Taking her face in his hands. Sickened by how it brings her to a complete stop. Almost passing out over his fingers. Holding her up by the jaw, it is terrifying. He's never known Daniel so weak and senseless. So wretched and torn. Daniel would never be this broken.

Yet she is. And it hurts like a burn to see what his absence has helped to do. Falling apart above him and never once complaining. He has never felt so ignorant. So disgraceful. So vile. Letting her die whilst he buried his guilt in the Owl's Nest. He was a terrible person, and he wished Daniel could see that. Tell him to leave and never come back. She would do better without him.

And he wanted to believe that. With every fibre of his being. He wanted to run away, and know she would survive. Thrive without him. But looking at her now, he couldn't. He couldn't believe. She needed him more than words could say. He knows she does.

"Last time you ate, Daniel?" He chokes, failing entirely to hide the pain in his voice.

"Food makes me sick." Turning a whiter shade of pale almost as proof.

"Last time you slept?" He feels the tears welling and is glad he pulled his mask back down.

Her confused look is all the answer he needs, as though she has no concept of what sleep is. He takes her into his arms and carries her out into the hall. She stinks. Under all the bleach. She stinks.

"Stomach hurts too much- Can't get comfy... Bad dreams."

Rorschach barely hears it as his fingers find her protruding ribs. They make him shudder. Daniel was a walking corpse, and he'd been hiding in a basement letting it happen. He was such a fool.

At the bathroom door he pauses. Blood and glass and bile. A black dress shredded on the floor. The grotesque evidence of Walter's crimes of cowardice. Daniel couldn't come in here either. Explained why she still stank.

The bedroom has stillness. A long-empty bed. Untouched and untainted by their terrible troubles. A bed they used to share. He can't see them ever doing so again. The thought feels like a rock in his throat.

"Sleep." He tells her, placing her in the mound of cotton and clean, "Please?"

Leaving her to the still and silence. Dropping his layers by the bathroom door. The tiles are bare an hour later. The horror hidden but not forgotten. Highlighted by the tossing and turning just down the hall. The feeling of accomplishment and atonement lost in those shuffling sounds. As his fingers close around the neck of a hot water bottle. She isn't sleeping. He thanks his mother for being useful at least once.

He stands in the bedroom ten minutes later, cast in shadow. Watching her rock back and forth.

"Daniel?" He mumbles, some part of him wishing she would fake sleep.

She gives him no such mercy. Rolling to face him, eyes still open. Always open. She scrutinises his sheepish shape, no energy left to open her mouth and ask why. Clutches her stomach and groans instead. And Rorschach remembers the warmed rubber in his hands.

Pushing the sack of water against her skin she gasps and clutches his wrist. Rising goose bumps, and almost a whine.

"Sorry. Too warm?" He mutters as her eyes scrunch together in what he recognises as pain.

"No, no it's good." She chokes pulling him in tighter, pressing the hot water bottle in closer.

It takes him some time to realise she has no intention of letting go as her legs curl up to capture his hand and the warmth all at once.

"Daniel..." Panic evident, though he can't place _why_ it is there.

"Just... stay, please?" She whispers, her eyes finally closing as she rubs her fingers against his skin, again trying to comfort him.

And he does. Standing by her side long after she has lost consciousness. A silent vigil on her tormented attempts at sleep. A pillar of silence, considering her face and her wanting fingers. For hours. Absorbing the truth in quiet and calm. A calm that eats at him like acid. Calm he did not deserve.

He deserved screams. He deserved fists. He deserved hate and anger. He deserved abandonment.

Watching her body melt against the mattress, all blood sweat and tears ignored with the absence of consciousness, he cannot word how thankful he is that he has not been on the receiving end of any. That she has blamed him for nothing. That she was gripping his arm like it was her lifeline.

Her face is pale and sickly, her eyes almost as black as the ink rolling over Rorschach's mask. But as she sleeps she almost seems human. Not some hideous thing tearing apart his world. Burning Daniel into oblivion. Like this, sleeping and stinking, she is almost beautiful.

Resting his knees upon the carpet, Rorschach leans his chin against the mattress. The proximity to her smell is overwhelming, or would be to anyone but him. A mix of pain, anger and fear tangible on her skin. Staining her pores like perfume. The smell of truth, of brutal honesty. She reeks of revenge, and it comforts him. In some sick and twisted way. It comforts him.

They were like two pieces, part of the same messy puzzle. Always close, but never fitting together. Even with all her different shapes, and sizes, hidden under cotton and filth, Daniel was still there, beating against the bones, trying to place herself in the jigsaw of their chaotic life.

It gives Rorschach cause to hope. Strange hopes. Of belief for future. Of Daniel still being inside this slumbering frame, waiting for him to see it. And he was trying, God, he was trying so hard to see past the body. To the person inside.

He hopes most of all that, in the end, Daniel still wants him, still holds his hand, screaming for justice, still wants Walter close. He hopes because he still can't believe, not yet, that anyone would.

"Daniel?" It's a whisper against her fingers, but it brings her out of her dose.

"Yeah?" She breathes into the dark as she tightens her grip around his arm, it still sends ripples of something wrong down his arm, but he finds it easier to ignore.

"Just checking." He mumbles; _just checking it's still you. Just checking you're still alive. Just checking you're mine. Just checking..._ "Have something to show you. In the nest, when you're ready. Sleep now though. Won't go anywhere. I promise."

He sleeps where he sits. He doesn't break his promise.


	11. Dan, What am I?

A/N: SO! People, I rewrote part 10 entirely so you should all go read it and hail the silverfox for saving you from the baaaad that was my failing brain. It's much better and less rushed, and totally worth the time I promiseee. Also changes the tone back to what it should be.

Oh just go read it you'll see what I mean!

Oh and to clarify silver my wonderful new best friend, in this version she will ALWAYS be Daniel. It's not a girls name, just like Hanna is not a boys :P

Otherwise, just enjoy. AND DON'T BE HATING ON THE CHEESE AT THE END! :P

* * *

Daniel can't quite put into words, can't quite describe, can't quite comprehend the creation held before her. Unsure fingers twitching over the Kevlar as Rorschach waits for any sort of reaction, other than stunned silence.

The surface is stained almost black with blood. It's never going to wash off, Rorschach hasn't even tried. Instead he's worked the colour and smell of fear into something solid, something indisputably real. Something terrifyingly strange and strong. Out of the ashes of a Nite Owl he has created this walking nightmare for her to be.

Seeing every single panel stitched perfectly together in a new order. In a new shape. It almost brings her to tears as she traces the white chest piece, covering deceptively strong armour beneath, and sees the surface turn black under her touch. Ink trickling down like raindrops. He'd cut up one of his masks. He'd given her one of his faces.

"Why?"

[_Because he is sorry._]

xxx

She cannot even begin to fathom how it fits. Sliding her feet through a mix of leather and Kevlar into a suit that prickled with anticipation, which of course was impossible. But as the zips closed in her skin, and clips clicked together, aided by his ever-present hands, she feels it like static. Of something visceral and unassailable biting into her being.

She remembered the first time she ever put on Nite Owl, but could not remember it ever feeling like this. Like an animal bearing its claws, stretching its bones out in the night. Consuming its kill in steady calculated bites.

She had never felt like prey to the being she was about to be. She had never been so willing to succumb to the madness that fuelled a vigilante onto the streets to bruise and burn.

xxx

"Daniel, is life fair?" Rorschach asks, pushing on her sleeves, smoothing out the shoulders, which arched at the tips, reminiscent of jutting bones.

[_"Life is what you make of it."_]

"No."

"Still feel that everyone deserves their chance?" He turns her around and clips the swirling white over a band of Kevlar.

[_"Just because they made bad choices, doesn't mean we should judge them guilty. People deserve the chance to change."_]

"No."

"Still want to cry for peace in an unending war?" He pulls in the hardened, shaped and detailed lapels, buttoning them down at the collar bone.

[_"I will fight this, to end it. So one day I can look at this city and know we're not needed."_]

"No."

"Still feel guilt?" He helps her pull up the zip, over her stomach, hiding her entire body from view.

[_"Sometimes I feel bad, you know? That we do this to people, pound them so hard they can't speak their piece. We catch them in the act, but we never know why."_]

"No."

"Feel like quitting?"He hands her gloves, with hardened tips, making talons out of her unsure fingers and Daniel vaguely wonders where he learnt to make these things, where he learnt to make any of it. Tailors surely had no need to alter armour.

[_"What's the goddamn point, Rorschach? It's never going to stop. We're holding umbrellas up to stop a tsunami!"_]

"Never."

"Not Nite Owl anymore."

xxx

Rorschach is so close it almost hurts to keep still. He still cannot bring himself to touch her, though she knows he has tried. Has felt the warmth of his fingers over her face as she battles with sleep. Has seen him studying her. Has forced himself close as breath. God, he is trying so hard to accept what she is.

All she wants is to clutch his elbows, like she does in her sleep, and pretend he's not terrified of feeling her. Terrified to handle what she is now, instead of just seeing it. Daniel wants to lean in and press her forehead to his like so many times before. Back when they were normal, back when they were men, but Daniel is very much aware that Rorschach can only do this because he's closing her in, not tearing her apart. That the more layers he folds over her, the safer she is to be around.

Her skin burns with the absence of contact, as his fingers float past her ears and the world spins down to one very simple thing. Him. And it's terrifying because she knows Rorschach is not ready to be close to her, to be doing these things. To be feeling her heart pulsing hard by his chest as they almost touch noses and he pulls something up from behind.

Daniel knows Rorschach is pushing it, forcing himself closer, and straining his boundaries. Trying to be okay, but instead of feeling grateful, she feels frightened, a little on edge. She doesn't want him doing this because he thinks he has to. She doesn't want him to do this if it makes his skin crawl. She doesn't want him to feel obligated. She wants him to _want_ her.

He fastens a hood over her head, clips it to her mask, and steps back, air rushing between them, swirling in the space. Letting them breathe again.

xxx

"So what am I Rorschach? A Mother Hen? " She laughs and the world seems to shudder, to linger on the long absent humour.

They savour it, revel in it. Remembering the feel of it like it is an old friend. They are lighter than they have been in a long time as Daniel plays with the tips of her new gloves.

"Not fluffy enough." Rorschach grunts, his shoulders rolling out into something relaxed.

It's taken him days, but he's finally stopped cringing at her voice. He can look her in the eye and she can touch him without a shudder, to an extent.

"A kitty then?" She teases scratching at the work bench with a grin.

"Cats have claws. You have talons."

The mood drops from its excitement and joviality as she picks up her new mask. Eyeing it carefully, with scrutiny and awe. It is small and it is shaped so beautifully. Curves and carvings, feathers by her eyes. She already has the plans for retractable lenses running through her mind. But the face is unrecognisable as she slides it over her hair.

Sharp and feral. She seems dark and predatory. An unknown creation.

"What am I then?"

"A Nite Hawk."


	12. Ror, 7

A/N: I listened to Twice by Little Dragon whilst writing this... It's a really mellow freaking song. I worry about myself sometimes heh.

* * *

It is a fascinating thing, Rorschach thinks, to watch a vigilante at work. Seeing elegance in the violence. Years of work creating something larger than life, something better than human. Basic instinct adapting to the cause. There is control and style. Something overtly strong in the symbol of their persona.

The first thing Rorschach sees as they enter the bank though, but the gagged and bound workers huddled into the centre of the room, is that Nite Hawk has no grace or élan. Whatever style she once possessed has abandoned her to bloody ruin as she tears at skin like some feral beast. Rorschach can see no control, and what's more concerning is he sees no wish to find it. She is lost in the roar of her own flowing rage, and Rorschach is too proud to admit she frightens him.

But fear is tangible as masked men brandishing firearms fall silent in surprise. He can't tell whose it is, the hostages, the holders or his own, but as a flurry of black flies past, twinned with an inscrutable growl, guns flash and he knows it doesn't matter. The idea of her flesh, bear under his fingers, the way she wanted, like a- doesn't matter.

She frightens him with her very presence, pulsating in the dark, consuming every piece of filth in their wake like some ever hungry beast. A glutton for punishment. He didn't know how to stop her, or whether she would let him if he tried. What was worse was he didn't know if he wanted to.

All he could do was follow in Nite Hawk's wake and tear apart the men she couldn't. Pull out the bones and spill their blood, surrounded by the wreckage of their own greed. A sick show of hands who now understood all the money in the world could not grant them the power of invulnerability. Could not protect them from this. And it brings a wry smile to his face when he realises no one will stop him anymore. No one will stop either of them.

The avaricious men are left. Left to cough up the money she had shoved down their throats. She had told them to eat it if they were so greedy. Told them to taste the cost. The cost of their mistakes. And it's far more poetic than Nite Owl ever was. It makes his head ache.

Rorschach had wanted to go home then. He had wanted to run. Hide in the basement. Cower from her half-crazed and sick eyes and pretend she wasn't what he had made. What he had created with absence, lies, and truths. What he had built in the dark. To do this. But he knew she wouldn't. This had only just begun. And his guilt and unwillingness to show weakness kept him by her side, his skin crawling with horror, choking in his ears.

Gangs of men have an overbearing capacity to resort to animalistic jeers and primal woops. Calling in the dark, drool dripping mouths, for tits and ass, skin and lips. They take her apart with their eyes. Ignorant of the person beneath the skin. It rips under his muscles like some foul poison. Rorschach had never been chivalrous, but this time he is in the fray first, pulling at arms and kicking out legs. His own words lost to the growl. It is livid chaos. He doesn't stop. Until he hears her scream.

No, he hears her roar. Everything stops. Everyone still standing turns. She is crowded, she is crushed. She is held on the floor by mucky hands and darkening eyes. It is so very surreal.

The man is laughing, pulling at his belt with his knees on her hands. She is still and silent, watching his lust rise in his hands. Rorschach wishes he could see her eyes when he hears the worm speak.

"Thought we'd go easy on you darlin'?"

Rorschach wanted to tear his limbs off. Rorschach wanted to separate his head from his shoulders and chop away his dick then spit in the wounds. He wanted to mash in his skull and walk on his brain. He wants to tell this _man _that he had no idea what 'easy' was, but he doesn't get the chance.

Her knees come up under him. Jerking him away with one buck of her feet. She would have been too big before. To do what she did. She would have been too sane to scrabble after him. Untamed claws digging into his throat and arm. It is unreal as she leans in to hiss only for him, but everyone hears it;

"No... I think you're gonna scream for me, 'darlin'."

And he does. When his fingers snap and a wrist cracks, when his elbow fractures and a shoulder comes out of its socket with a muted pop. He screams like a terrified child. It is a cacophony of messy breaks and gurgled sobs, as his eyes roll and she drops him like the trash that he is. Leaves him in a puddle of his own filth, but the world still does not fall back into focus.

People run and others drop. Rorschach see's her gouge out an eye and he can't seem to recall how it was that he could move. Ever. Before this. How he had ever functioned without seeing her monstrosity charging in the dark. Like some tempestuous wraith, leaving nothing standing, leaving nothing free. She may have no discipline, but there is a beauty. A magnificence leaving him in the shadows, envious of her raucous roar.

A month had forced in her, what had taken years to build in him. His absolute jealousy is outweighed by his own strained awe and something deep in his gut that he can't quite place. And they move on in silence, he is lost in her shadow now, and he doesn't quite mind anymore. He is consumed. He doesn't mind at all.

Rorschach knew the power of ignorance. It brought about brutal and bloody murder. It gave him his face, and it told him his purpose. The indifference and laziness of man gave him his name and his reach into the darkness. He knows it will never go away. That it will never be punished. It is a fundamental wrong in human nature. That takes hold and makes people weak. That raised something in him that can never be stopped. Sent him onto the streets to fight the things they tried to pretend weren't there.

But when Nite Hawk is faced by it. Truly confronted by the emotionless detachment of man. When she sees a woman screaming in the dark, hands pulling at skin and biting at bones, crying for help, and the stranger just pass her by, she cannot do the same.

Rorschach sees a different fury flare as he grips a shoulder and takes down a maggot with one swift blow. He sees a different being entirely scrape at a civilians scalp and force him to the ground. Nite Hawk is foul and lurid as he is dragged, kicking and screaming, to the woman he had chosen to leave to her fate. She is wrath. And he is forced to beg for help that will not come.

The fire in her eyes is enough to soften stone but Rorschach sees the terror. Bleeding out of her, into the night like a cloud of hungry spores. She shakes like a leaf. It is painted over her body as he stares silent and stunned, Daniel's fear would never go unheard, not by Rorschach.

And he realises, now, that Nite Hawk doesn't know _how_ to stop. But Daniel wants to. Before she can't take this back. She wants to stop.

So he takes her arms and drags her home. Leaving the whimpers, and Nite Hawk's fury behind. Until all that is left if Daniel, sobbing on his shoulders, and he is holding her close because he wants to. Because he wants to comfort her. He wants her to know that he understands. That just like Walter, Daniel is still in there too.


	13. Dan, Tenderness

A/N: LOL! Kinky Bootz, would you believe me if I told you, that until I posted this on the kinkmeme, I didn't even think it was scary? Maybe Angsty, but no scary? So when you say you're seeing dirty thing, there is a large chance they're there, and I just haven't noticed them xD.

ENJOY EVERYONE - This one is only short, the next one will be longer. Promise.

* * *

Daniel felt like she was dying. Not the same way she had before. Not from the inside, with black dots and acid, but choking herself with her own hands and tears. Scratching at her throat, trying to scream out the horror, but all that comes is broken moans and ruined words. All that comes is an inhuman roar.

She is trapped inside zips and clips. Scratching at her insides. Pulling apart her soul. The monster laughing in her ears like some rabid hyena. Tearing her mind asunder with anger and chaos and an absence of control. Mocking her. She is terrified. She clutches Rorschach, and see's the fear in him too. She screams, and this time the words are there, lost in the noise, but they're there.

"Get me out of here!"

xxx

Everything is disjointed. Sliding in and out. Rocking back and forth. Screaming in the sweat. She's sure there are hands trying to hold her together. But they're just overlaying mass, breaking seams. Clinging for dear life. Writhing in horror. Their faces and their eyes and their blood and their mouths contorting past her eyes like some broken movie reel. She could have- She almost-

She wanted to vomit. Pull her stomach out through her throat and rub it on the floor. Get the taste out of her body, not just her mouth. The taste of hate and torment.

"Not on you, Daniel." Comes his whisper, the dawns early light pouring through the living room curtains.

But, yes it was! It was all over her. Sliming across her skin, suffocating her from the outside in as she threw herself onto the floor. Scratching against the carpet, like a dog scraping off fleas, she groans into the thread. Her body burns, turning shades of irritated red and she hates it. Naked, and dying, falling apart all over again. The only difference now is that he is here, grabbing at her shoulders and pulling her up to look at him. The only difference is he isn't running this time.

"It's in you." He breathes over her cheeks as she pulls him close, needing the contact now more than ever, "Right where it always was, where it belongs."

xxx

"Too much Daniel!" Rorschach's voice is distant and admonishing, but dripping with anxiety.

He's trying to hide it, but she hears it anyway, even if the words don't get through. They are just background noise as she trips over boots, and is yanked from her armours legs. Torn from the chest and left bare. To crawl over a dusty floor. Shivering like an animal thrown out into the cold.

It is akin to being gutted or born. Stripped of identity and self. Of sin and decay. Left stinking but clean on the cold basement floor, but whatever Nite Hawk is, she is crawling through her veins like a disease. Crippling. Digging her claws in. Finding a place to stay.

Scalding fingers grab at her skin, she can't tell if it's leather or callous, and the contact on her pores is enough to make her moan. To shut Nite Hawk up and allow her to be lifted from the floor and carried out of the basement, retching into a chest that's dark and distant.

"Did too much."

xxx

He's right. She knows he is, and it makes her whimper, pull him closer. Whatever Nite Hawk was, she had always been there. She'd just never been needed. Not needed like Walter needed Rorschach. Not like Nite Owl was needed, as a disguise to protect her from the world's eyes. She was needed just to breathe, to move, to function at all in the dark beyond the brownstone. She was the only thing keeping Daniel standing.

She felt like her body was just buzz and blood. No skin, no heart, no mind. She needed him closer; she needed to feel real and as his forehead meets hers, her entire body quivers. When he stays as rigid as a board, it only makes her sob.

Yes Nite Hawk was horrifying, yes she was cruel, yes she was merciless, but she was freedom. Freedom from being trapped here, like this, bubbling in her own skin. Daniel was lost in her shadow, but maybe that's how it was supposed to be. Maybe all she had to do was remember who was under the mask, just like Walter did. Remember that no matter what the masks made her into, she was still Daniel. Somewhere. She would always be Daniel.

xxx

Daniel grips his mottled lapels. Stops Rorschach – Walter – from leaving her here on the floor. From running, or hiding, or whatever it was he planned on doing. Gripped him hard, pulled him down onto his knees.

"No." She gasps as he closes in around her fingers, "Need you. Don't- still not..."

He doesn't say a word. And she is glad, again, because words are so trivial in times like these. He just unfastens his coat, opens it wide and pulls her inside. The very act itself has her breathless, choking, shaking. He guides her hands around, like she's a child who doesn't know what to do. Doesn't know how to hug. He lets her wrap her legs around him as he lies back against the sofa front.

There are no soothing hands, no rubs against her bare back, he only pulls his coat around her emaciated body and holds her. Listening to his heart beat, as fast as bird's wings, he's so frightened of this, but it is completely enough. This one show of tenderness is completely enough.

"There's always someone in here, Daniel, waiting." He whispers after what seems hours, the very words making his skin vibrate against her unsure fingers, then his arms do tighten, as if to put weight in the words, "Promised I wouldn't go anywhere."


	14. Ror, Nightmare

We apologise for the delay, and now back to our scheduled programming, we return you to your nightmare.

/coughs – Yeah this makes up for the short set up piece that was the last chapter xD

I listened to Shekel's 'The Number of the Beast' and 'This is Not Our Planet' - the filthiest dubstep ever whilst writing this.

Ror's POV

* * *

"Daniel..." It echoes around him, alone in an empty room.

Darkness creeping through gaps in the walls, slimy and ringing with butchered silence. Everything is the same, but everything is different. Twisted askew. Unfamiliar. Lays just the wrong way. The world is dizzy, he isn't, and the Brownstone has never felt so full; it has never felt so empty. Stiff legs carry him to the basement door. He finds it open- it's _never_ open.

"Daniel?" His own voice seems like a distant entity lost in the chime of nothing.

The stairs beat black and brutal against his stinging heavy eyes. Locked in place by the empty space between him and what was certain to lie beyond.

"GET ME OUT OF HERE!"

It's a screech, barely human and hardly words. Rips through his temples. Claws in his scalp. Throws him back against a wall choking and terrified. But only for a moment, only ever for a moment, because-

"Daniel."

The basement oozes with frozen fear. Broken metal littering the floor. Light from nowhere, showing everywhere. Empty space and all the dust between. And he can't move. None of it fits together. Locked in place. Wretched and ragged under the face as a Nite Hawk beats itself against the wall. Crashes against the tables. Scrapes across the floors.

Rorschach wants to run. Hide. Die. Cry. Pull away and never see this again. She tears open the chest and everything pours onto the floor. Leaves empty shells still moving through the dark. Bones breaking. Louder than any screams. Jutting forth and cracking out. One side of the room becomes another. Venom leaks from her lips over the floor as she tries in vain to be free of the skin she is in. Abandon the person who _isn't_ beneath. Until only the monster stares out at him, hungry and seething.

And there isn't time. There's not enough time. Never enough time as broken bitter yellow teeth pull at torn lips. As it rears forward, going for his throat, going for his soul, going for his heart. It roars, whatever it is, the beast that is roaming free. He supposes there weren't meant to be words, but he hears them anyway-

"GET ME OUT OF HERE!"

The knife that wasn't in his hand, not before, never again after, drives into the empty chest. Snaps her asunder and leaves her pooling over the floor. Bleak and black, hissing and slithering. A pool of blood, piss, vomit and brittle bone.

Now Rorschach runs, now Walter flees. Up the stairs and out of the door too soon. Too soon to see fingers sliding out through the slime. To see arms pulling out red hair and blazing eyes. To see rouge and rot. To see another monster born from the first.

"Rorschach?"

The kitchen calls with a voice absent in the familiar. Pulls at his heart and makes his ears bleed under the ink. Daniel stands in the doorway. Not Nite Owl. Not Nite Hawk. Not the woman who had fallen asleep holding his arms. But Daniel. _His _Daniel. Rolling a cup between cloth and fingers, glasses perched in his hair. Boxers and half buttoned shirt. Like... Like this never happened. Like this never stole a single day.

"You alright buddy?"

And if anything could have sounded more broken, more happy, more thankful, it would have been escaping hidden lips, turning salty with tears.

"Daniel..."

The distance between them seems infinite and confused. Not knowing whether to help or hinder as he reaches out to touch what surely has to be true. What has to be home. What has to be safe and his and _real_.

Until fingers crawl up behind him, tiptoe into brown beautiful hair and pull without complaint or fight from the man underneath. Red nails and painted lips kissing at Daniel's neck and murmuring foul sounds Walter has heard before. Has heard all of this before. Seen it in horrid halls and stained bedrooms.

She shouldn't be here. She should never be here. Not on Daniel. Not in his home. Not poisoning the air with her foul stench and drooling words. She shouldn't be tempting men away from _him_. Not now. Not ever. She was dead. She could _not_ steal _his_ Daniel.

Walter whines and stumbles away as his _mother_ strokes at bare chest and licks at exposed temples. Smiles at him through glazed eyes and rotting flesh.

"No..."

Smiles until her teeth bear and drive into willing flesh. Tear out jugular, vocals chords, pieces of spine and skull. And Daniel screams. Like he should have the moment she touched him. Like he should have the moment he knew what she was, had been. He finally screams;

"GET ME OUT OF HERE!"

Bodies hit the floor, heavy and horrifying. Eyes rolling into the back of his head, Daniel dies wheezing. Rorschach dies sobbing, all over again. He dies.

Mocking empathy. Stupid sounds. Floating from her lips. She can't make _words_ with those teeth. He hears them anyway. Digging into his soul and pulling out the black, rubbing it over his skin like mud.

This time there isn't a knife. This time the monster gets him. Grips him by the throat and holds him high. Snaps and growls, spits and shakes. He doesn't care. He can't care. Her blackened teeth bearing down upon his face. A snake and its mouse. Rips through his chest and out through his lips. Tearing him open to sink in its teeth. She eats him alive. And at first he is glad. To be ending. To be dying. To be joining his partner, dead on the floor. Together at last. For eternity, evermore.

Her hands drive into his skin, tearing out flesh and organ, clothes and bone. And it takes too long. Too long for him to notice. Too long to fight back. Too long to make it stop. Too long to realise she isn't killing, she's burrowing in. Finding purchase on his marrows, taking up host in his heart. Too long.

"NO!"

Turn. Mirror. Wall of mirrors. Endless walls. A circle of glass closing him in. But no Walter staring back, no Walter. No man at all.

"Daniel."

She's in his clothes, holding his mask, black eyed and broken. Tears staining her face as she stares back at him through cracking glass. She's wasting away. Her cheeks shallow, her lips dry. The clothes fall loose and her fingers are little more than skin covered bone. He tries to find a way in. A way to reach. To touch her still. Because even though she's not right, she's still _his_ Daniel, and he can't bear to see her die a second time. His gloves squeak against the panes. He can't get through. He can't get free. He can't...

Breath echoes around, ragged and reeling. Rising in the air like clouds of smoke. Sobbing through the latex, fingers slide over his spine. His mother writhing through his bones. Scratching his muscles and tearing his skin. He feels sick. So sick it can't be real. Like he's meant to die, but he can't. Not yet. Not yet.

But nothing changes. Daniel surrounds him, only bone and blood left. Nothing changes. He's forced to watch her fall apart, piece by piece, until she's screaming. Throwing herself against the glass to make it stop. To get to him. And he can't hear any of it. Not a sound as he howls into the dark. Closes his eyes. He can't watch her die again.

"GET ME OUT OF HERE!"

The glass shatters about him as a body collides. Grinds in and bears down. Digs desperately, cold and queer. Skin fuses and bones break to get inside. Daniel taking over. Becoming one and the same. Forced in. Forced in to the only safe place she can find against his will. But she's safe inside. She should have been safe inside.

Sinew ripples and rolls him through the black. Tosses his organs aside as screams bubble in his arteries. Fear and fury clashing between. It rides on his nerves and breaks through his ears. Spreads out into the Brownstone. A war beneath. He wishes he would die. Convulsing and shaking, foetal and alone, he wishes he would die. He let her. He let her in. Both of them. He let her be consumed by the rot.

It takes hours. Maybe days. For his body to cease. To drop him down and leave him heaving, sobbing, screaming. Useless and weak. Stupid and speechless. Daniel had been better than this. Better than his rotting ruins. Better than his mothers words. Better than anything, even in the face of the devil, she was better than this. She hadn't deserved it. None of it.

She shouldn't have starved. She shouldn't have screamed. She shouldn't have been consumed. She shouldn't have been feared. She shouldn't have been left.

He should have stayed. He should have helped. He should have seen. Now it was too late. It was too late to say sorry. It was too late to say goodbye. It was too late to hold her and tell her-

"_Hush then why do you cry_?" There's sobbing in the dark that's not his own.

To the sides and all around. A bell toll calling for him to open his eyes. And she lies beside him. Fingers sliding between his. Words like wails of a children's pain. And he can do nothing else. He can see nothing else. As he pulls her in and grips her tight. Like she'll disappear if he doesn't. Like she'll die if he doesn't keep her here. In his arms. Alive. And she whimpers at him, stroking at his mask. Like she can see the stained face behind.

"_It's you and me the same as before_."

It is serene, it is heart aching, it is time stopping. She shakes in her skin, rocking on her knees, convulsing and rolling, naked before him, bones showing under the luminous pale. The madness of blood and black, and violence and decay fade away to her fingers on his face. Her eyes searching, longing, loving, deep and dark, just like Daniel.

He loses himself in her, his heart racing just like before, but not the same way. Never the same way. As she lifts the lip of his mask and kisses at his stubbly skin, wet with shared sadness and fear. She's so clumsy and can't find her way, sobbing around him, deafening him, killing him. Until he can wait no longer for her to find the place she seeks through the torment.

Gripping her cheeks he pulls her lips to his, and she whines something more broken, and relieved than he has ever heard. He feels it too under his skin, because she is Daniel, _his_ Daniel, under his fingers shaking with acceptance and joy.

This one sinks into him without resistance. Without horror. Slides through the gaps and into the pores. Leaves him alone, clinging to thin air. Wrecked and weeping on his knees as she wriggles under his skin, finding place with the rest of the pieces. Bringing peace.

"Rorschach?" Distant and worried, broken and gravelly.

Everything slips and pools away around him. Brings with it dawn and dirt. The smell of blood and sweat. His eyes open to see her again. Bloody mouth. Blossoming bruise. And he couldn't have stopped himself. Not even if he tried.

His lips against hers. _He_ sinks this time, not her.

"Daniel..."


	15. Dan, Stay

Dan's POV

* * *

"Stay with me." She whispers desperately against his ear, pulling him closer.

She needed him to stay with her, not slip into that place in his mind that made this wrong. That made her the whore. That made him the trick. She needed him to know this was not the same as she gripped his hair through the latex and whined.

Sucking air and blood through her teeth; he's thrusting with strained and wounded grunts. Her body arching up into him, his tongue lapping at the rising veins in her throat.

The gasps break free to words again as he pulls her closer, pushing in harder.

"Please, Walter, stay with me."

xxx

This was not about being gentle. This was not adrenalin induced lust. This was reclaiming what they had lost. Had been losing.

It's a mad scramble as his teeth draw shivers. Her lips elicit half-sure growls and leave trails of blood. Her fingers find belts and buttons, his find flesh and bones. No time to play. No time to relax.

She could feel him trying. God, he was trying so hard not to break, as his fingers slid inside, took a breast, he was trying so hard not to be repulsed. To give her the same chance she had given him, back when she had still been a man. A man in love with another man. An impossible man. A man who believed every part of himself was repulsive and wrong, just like she did now.

But before either of them could process what this was going to mean, what this was going to do, before he could stop hands pulling open his trench coat, before she could stop him pulling apart the fly of his pants, before either of them could filter out the insanity, he had pushed his way inside.

xxx

"It's me, Ror-ahhh—it's Daniel." She chokes at him as his nails dig into her thighs, hard enough to bruise.

The thin line of lips that had been his controlled emotions was now a savage snarl under the curl of the mask. His eyes buried into her collarbone, he would not—could not look at her, his harsh growls hissed through her ears like razors. She was losing him. She could feel it.

With every moan he drew from her shaking breast, his muscles tightened; span in and out with disgust, hurt and an overwhelming primal need to keep inside.

"It's Daniel." She whimpers through the blood in her mouth, thumbing his lips, trying to wipe away the hurt. Trying to clean out the damage that ran so deep.

"Please."

And if she hadn't already been crying, the tears would have stained her face a thousand-fold.

"Please."

xxx

"Jesus—Mary mother of—Fuck!"

["_It's a strange thing, to lose your virginity twice, as both a man and a woman. Men get it easy in comparison._"]

A groan guttural and low found its way out of his throat, strong enough to make the floor shake. His face pressed against skin. She held back the shudder, beginning at her toes, working its way up her thighs, and into her spine. Her body reacting to the invasion against her will as she hissed through bleeding teeth, whining something pained but needy.

There was no rhythm, or pattern that followed. No satisfying thrusts in and out. Nothing like before. Instead, he pulled her closer, pushing himself higher, deeper, farther. His breath hitching as her fingers groped desperately at the material of his suit jacket. Little yelps escaping her lips every time he pulled her hips against his own.

xxx

"Daniel..." And its barely there, a broken plead in the dark.

But she hears it. Pulling him closer. Pulling him into her with all the strength she has left. Ribs aching against his rigid chest as he heaves. She knew better than to assume he was crying.

"I'm here." She breathes back, "I'm here."

xxx

It was slow and it was agonising, and it was on purpose. It was claiming every inch. It was _feeling_every inch. Soon he was so deep it ached. Tilting her hips, he felt her whole body rock under his grasp.

Strained breaths rang in the silence, magnified in emptiness around them, and just when she thought he'd gotten himself in far enough, far enough in to pull out again and start doing this right, he pulled her legs tight under the lips of his trench and went deeper. So deep it felt like he was going to tear her apart if he didn't stop. So deep it felt like he was in up to her chest.

Cries escaped her lips as she pulled at his arms, she wanted him out, and she wanted him to stop. She didn't want any such thing at all. Her body twitched and shook under the pressure. His teeth found her lips, and she screams so raw it tears her throat. Her fingers so tight against the swirling ink there was a good chance the material would burst.

xxx

"Please, stay with me."

xxx

Whatever it was he felt after that; her muscles contracting and vibrating around him, her breath failing to restart, her legs shaking over his hips, something inside complaining, her cervix she thinks. It made him stop, pull away a little. Even if it was just to look at her in a mix of wonder and horror, as her fingers shook violently about his ears and she let out a sob. A single sob.

The blood dripping over her cheeks and onto the floor as she ground her teeth.

He watched every little reaction, and felt others around him. Then as the shiver worked its way through the rest of her bones he lowered himself over her. His coat pulled under her shoulders, as though the shiver was from being cold. It was so painfully sweet it made her whimper as he brushed his nose against her like a nuzzling dog.

xxx

"Daniel..." He chokes out.

Filling her to the brim. With everything. With himself. Everything he felt. And everything he could never admit to feeling. Making her scream and tear at his shoulders as she rode out the sting, his fingers tracing her cheeks like a blind man, his breath hitching at her lips as her teeth tore them open.

"Daniel."

So much held tight in that one little word. All the hurt, all the thanks and all the need one can show in a simple utterance of a name. And it's not perfect. It doesn't make anything better. But it's there. And it's him seeing past the nightmare. It's there.

No. It's not perfect, but nothing ever is.


	16. Ror, Whispers

SO, I've decided this is finished. There's nothing more I can say for them at this stage. And I need a break from the angst. So I'm going to write porn instead... LOTS OF IT, for myself... for you. Just porn porn porn. For about a month...

Then I have more angst for this universe that you will see... that's... owwwie that will come in a couple of sequels. BUT I WONT RUIN IT! SHUTTUP DIBDIB.

Anyway, yeah. Sorry it's so abrupt, but it seemed the right place to finish.

Ror's POV

* * *

Walter hides. Behind his mask and in the shadows. Hides from himself, and from her. From the monster that he is. That he let himself be. He hides from the sight of it. Playing off of her face like light reflecting from a crystal. But it's no use. Distracting his mind, from playing it over and over. Because he still feels it.

Feels it sliding under his sinew. A stubborn memory, crippling him with more guilt than he can bear. He could feel her. Over his skin. He was trapped inside her. A ghost of the sensation rippling over him. Nothing better, or worse, than this. And he groans against the wall as he pulses and aches.

Hiding could not change what he- he had... Pulled her in as far as he could, without ever asking for permission.

But he had to. He had to. It was the only way he knew to prove she was there. She was real. She wasn't dead. Or lost inside somewhere untouchable. She was there and real. And he could be inside instead-

No...

He growls his fingers' digging into skin through latex. Excuses. They were only excuses. And there were none for what he had done to Daniel. For what he had taken. Had hurt. Again. When he'd promised not to. So he hides. Here in the dark. Huddled in a corner like a child in a dunce's hat.

But Nite Hawk still sees him. Stares at him. In a crumpled mess on the concrete ruddy floors. Her insides spilt. Just like... but not the same. Never the same. And she knows. She is the part of Daniel that knows. The part that is angry and alone, and knows. That might hurt him back. Like he wanted. Like he deserved.

Fingers close around his scalp, and he would have jumped. He would have, if he had not already been shaking himself onto his knees with remorse and paranoia. Nite Hawk crawling, empty across the floor to climb under his skin.

"Enough." Comes a whisper, pulling away the mask, "Enough hiding."

There is the sensation of contact somewhere over his hair, as his skin burns with cracking tears. But she steps away. Leaves him hanging in empty frozen air. The sound of her bare feet makes him wince. Until she sits solemn and still, somewhere behind out of reach. He can only imagine what she thinks. Of him. Of this. Of the wrong he has done. To her. Sitting in silence. A judge, jury and executioner. Ruling over a truly guilty party.

"What happened?" She asks so quietly, as though she is committing some great sin in breaking his solitude.

And he hates it. He hates it because he knows she isn't going to let herself be angry. She isn't going to scream or cry. Or hurt him. She is just going to ask, like she has done twice already, and he will barely form the words, like he hasn't been able to. Twice already. Because it is impossible to describe it. Describe what he sees when he closes his eyes. Every piece of her dead on the floor. Every piece lost.

"You-" He retches on the words, on his mothers laughs and burrowing claws, "died."

The silence stretches out like an undiscovered arm of the universe. Presses on him in the darkness. Shows how small and insignificant everything is in comparison to something else. Something larger. More visceral. Reminds him again how everything is an excuse. Upon an excuse. Upon an excuse. An excuse he had no right in making.

"Should have stopped me."

His hands press against the cold concrete, to keep himself from running. Turning. Looking at her. Because he knew she could have. If she had tried. She could have stopped him ruining her.

"Probably." She concedes, and her tone is something he cannot recognise.

And he moans. He moans as every muscle in his body convulses with pain and regret. He doesn't understand. How she is so strong. So silent. So simply present. She should be screaming. Tearing. Biting. Swearing. She should be telling him to leave and never come back. But she isn't. And he isn't sure which hurts more as the silence burns around him all over again.

He misses the inane ramblings Daniel used to make before any of this. To fill his silences. To alleviate his guilt. To lessen the burden of responsibility. To make his side of the relationship, his own participation, easier to neglect. Because now all she does is wait. No whispers of words that meant nothing and everything. She just waits. For him to say what he needs to, instead of saying it herself.

"So sorry, Daniel." Is all he can think to say.

And she laughs. She laughs. But it's not the same as before. It's bitter and a little forced, and it makes him cringe. It makes him look at her as she leans back, her chest heaving with some hysteria he can't comprehend.

"You're sorry, I'm sorry, everyone's sorry." She says plainly, flatly, emotionlessly.

Her eyes fall from the pipes and wires weaving above her head, to the little man who doesn't understand how much he is loved. Her face resolves from the pain of seeing, a pain he understands, because he's not what he was before either. Resolves into something settled and determined. Hollow. Persevering. A little condescension he's never seen before. He's never seen any of this before as her mouth opens with an air of finality and ruin.

"I'm _sick_ of sorry. Can we please get angry instead?"

The light flashes in her oversized glasses, and the words become more than that. They become something physical and fundamental. Shining in the lenses like a creature caught by the firelight. Angry.

Both their eyes trail to the pieces of monster left barren on the floor. The one that had terrified them both only the night before. Now, though, its dominance is tempting. Calling. An outlet. A way for her to scream into the night and hurt something real. Something worth hurting. To change something that can be changed. To stop feeling victimised, and guilty, ruined and worn. To feel strong and succinct and whole.

A way for her to be something. Just what Rorschach had meant Nite Hawk to be.

"We?" He mutters, and hates the sheepish tone to his broken voice.

"We."

The city spread beneath their bloody feet hours later, the dawn's first attempts barely breaching the smog that has settled. The screams of the night are dying away as he watches her watch him like two predators dancing to the same sickly tune. Two hungry savages circling a kill. But it's not. As they sit over an alleyway. It's relaxed and free. Something like the first nights they ever did this together.

"Feel better?" He asks, it's inhumanly balanced and hollow, the people who fell tonight mean nothing in their lives.

She bears her teeth in some manic grin, as another fearful cry comes somewhere underneath this strange uniting of beasts. There's nothing but violence and grime. But they feel better. Muscles heaving with unused adrenalin. They feel better. Worked out and done in. Exhausted but good. Like they've fought with fate and won. Instead of being beaten down and spat on by it.

It is still sad, though, as the smog turns to drizzle about their ears. There was a life before this that has ended now. A life they won't get back. A life they don't need to get back. But a life that needs mourning. Without feeling the blame for having lost it.

"Think you'll be able to behave like a normal person?" He asks passing her a sugar cube from the deeper recesses of his trench coat as the water hitting their clothes sounds like a symphony of percussive waves.

"Well behaved women rarely make history."

He smiles under the swirling ink. That's exactly what he hoped she'd say.

And this time when they fight together there's no fear of falling to the beasts, for a person who has hit bottom can only see up. This time when they dance together, back to back, side by side, there's only knowledge and synchronised relief. This time, when they fold together, becoming one once more, there is no guilt or repulsion. Only an understanding.

It is not about the skin. It is who she is that matters. And she is Daniel.


End file.
